Pathfinders Complete, Hammerhead on Deck!

I had a long weekend thanks to snow, and I managed to get a few things done. Just have to finish a hammerhead, and my army list for this saturday's Paul Basement League event should be just about fully painted!

I Painted up the last 4 of my pathfinders. I got them done in one sitting, which was surprising considering it took me months to finish painting the first 4. I guess I had a better idea of what I wanted this time around. I may add a few more later on to form two midsize squads like I've done in the past.

After much cursing and superglued fingers, I fixed the LED work on my pimped out hammerhead that I had previously broken. I still need to hide all the wireing on the railgun, likely with some greenstuff and plasticard plating.

I also did a good deal of the less interesting tasks that were piling up. I finished basing everything in my army, darkened the red on my original hammerhead, and fixed up some terrain.

I've noticed a growing disparity between my terrain and my bases, which will have to be fixed. As much as I dont want to, I think I need to retouch all of my bases to less muddy look and more desert. Hopefully this can be done with just a bit of the coloring from my terrain paints. I'm also thinking of matching my base rims to this sand color as well. I'll make a test group and see how I feel.

Next up on my plate is to work on airbrushing gradients on the last two vehicles, as I am done trying to hand shade reds over vehicles. You can see this started on some of the hammerhead images below. Its currently at a satin kind of look, and I think it looks pretty good in subpar lighting. But when seen in pictures or good lighting, its not quite there. I think it needs a bit more contrast so I'm going to give it another pass of darkening, and maybe a pass of orange red to bring out a bit more color. Heres hoping I dont screw up!

______________________________________________

Vior'la reinforcements

I am lazy so just copying over my post from ATT. This is some of my more recent work. The four suits are just about done, save for a few touchups. The color balance is a little off in these pictures, but the red is pretty close.









The pathfinder reinforcements have finally arrived. They now have a proper 'ui, who has, ahem, "rekrooted" some odd characters to fill the ranks. I need to finish up gsing before they can move into the paint queue. The female 'ui was made with some Wood Elves Glade Guard bits.









And here is a quick shot of the cadre on display. The flash managed to reflect the weathering attempts on the pathfinder fish a bit more than is actually there in normal light. My original hammerhead has turned out to be much brighter than how the rest of my force developed, so it is in the process of being darkened.

O'scar'mey'er Wei'ner stage WIP

Here is a quick update of my current work. 4 suits and two fish are at hand painting stage. At this point their base coats look like hot dogs and mustard (thanks for the reference Joe) The one fish is fully modded out. Insides are painted, everything is magnetized, side doors and top hatch are hinged, LED railgun and engine thrusters, modular for HH,DF,SR load outs. I figure I will do this just once and get it out of my system because it really makes for a long project. I also managed to make the other fish skyray compatible as well.

I recently got a Badger Renegade-Velocity airbrush, and it blows my old Aztec brush out of the water. Long times before clogging, very forgiving on mixed paints, and quick on color changes. The level of detail I can achieve has lead me to more experimenting in shading, though I'm not quite proficient at it yet. I managed a slight shade through black base coating and a white base coat on certain parts, but its clear that I need shadow/highlight colors to reach a full affect. While this isn't necessary on the suits, such as this one, because I hand paint in the end resulting red. But hand brushing shadows and highlights on the vehicles can really ruin the look on such flat surfaces. Hopefully I can get the hang of doing it with the airbrush to deal with an otherwise annoying step.

There are some fun modficiations in this group. The most obvious is the deepstrike suit. As I've had some slight success with a lone deepstriking sunforge suit (twinlinked flamer/ Air frag burst 'Vre variant as well) in the last few games, I've decided to model a specific suit for the job. I've spent some time sanding down almost all of his corners to go for a bit of aerodynamic feel to it. His raised height will single him out and generally mean he will have nowhere to hide. I might lower his stand just a bit, and base in a bit of vehicle roof as a simulated target (probably out of a plaster mold like previous ruined terrain! I love that technique!) But honestly, his job is rather suicidal, so I don't feel much remorse in lessening his life expectancy.

This group will nearly complete my current Tau collection. Only some newly converted pathfinders, half done firewarriors, and broken crisis suits remain. After I still have some army-wide tweaks to bases, freehand symbols, and weathering, but these can be done at a leisurely rate. I'm much more excited to continue work on my Christmas XV-9 and prep it as a GD entry!